Aware that this could have absolutely no bearing on the current investigation, does the CDFA principle have any place in NS non-precision?
JS. Not at present, no. CDFA was mandated for FW in 2011, but not for helos.
There is a compromise between "Dive & Drive" and CDFA, which is to require NPAs to be flown using a "notional glidepath" (i.e. a continuous descent following the altitude vs DME table) to the MDA and then "drive" to the MAPt. True, there is a "drive" element to that, but it does prevent "ducking under".